Seeing as how this was the most recent movie that could qualify as a guy movie that I've seen in the theater, it'll have to make do as my first review.
First things first, The Town is a solid action flick. It's got plenty of guns being shot, three slick heists, cops getting their shit ruined by robbers, a good car chase, and a guy gets shot in the grape in slow mo. So far so good. To be honest, I was a bit hesitant towards watching Ben Affleck's Boston-boner popping movie since I saw the trailer and automatically thought: Heat in Boston. Don't get me wrong, now. Heat is a great movie. It is undoubtedly among the best crime movies ever made, and since Michael Mann was behind the camera it has the loudest damn gunfight ever caught on tape, not to mention a fantastic cast.
The good news is that The Town is a good enough movie to stand on its own. If you've seen Gone Baby Gone, you know that Affleck has what it takes to direct a movie.
The story begins with a group of dudes wearing Skeletor masks and packing serious heat making their way into a bank. They strip the joint clean and take Rebecca Hall's character hostage (stupid idea #1). Blah blah blah and eventually you see where this is going. Love interest develops, she becomes a liability, and it all plays out into a great last half hour of gunfire-fueled orgy of destruction on the streets of Boston. The dialogue is smooth and there's a few good quotable lines that got me saying "hell yes." It's got a strong cast with Affleck, Jeremy Renner (plays a psychopath and shoots people with a Tec-9 or beats people with bats. This is good.) and Jon Hamm. Also rounding out the cast is a great scene by the always good Chris Cooper and Pete Postletelpslelsteplwelwwaithe (he shot dinosaurs in Jurassic Park 2). Affleck has had his manly credibility on shaky ground ever since he released that turd of a movie Gigli, but he makes up for it in this flick by nailing his part as leader of the crew pulling off dem bank robberies throughout the city. His character is grizzled and conflicted (yeah we get it, robbin banks is hard) and is convincing in his relationship with Hall's bank manager. Renner steals the show however, displaying some of that great ferocity he showed in The Hurt Locker. He's an unabashed, cold-blooded hard bastard and it's great to see him explode in random bouts of violence. There's a pretty memorable scene between him and Affleck roughing up some thugs in their apartment.
All in all, you could do worse with your $11.00 at the box office. You could be watching Step Up 3D...
tl;dr: The guy from Mad Men shooting guns at Ben Affleck and that one guy from The Hurt Locker while they rob banks.
Gat -wielding Skeletor gives The Town a 8.5/10 and says you should watch this shit.
Great review - lovin' your blog...I've got a lot of reading to do!!! :)
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